Listen to
Mika Yoshitake:
This mix of everyday objects, including shoes and chairs, look like they’ve been overrun by an accumulation of soft phallic sacs. Meanwhile, painted macaroni runs riot over the dress like a swarm of ants.
Kusama often uses her complexes and fears as subjects in her artwork. She says: ‘reproducing the objects, again and again, was my way of conquering the fear . . . that turns the frightening thing into something funny, something amusing’.
Mass-produced food is a particular stressor for Kusama. ‘The thought of continually eating something like macaroni . . . fills me with fear and revulsion,’ she has said, ‘so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them.’
Kusama is no stranger to this laborious and repetitive mode of working. As a fifteen-year-old conscripted by the Japanese Imperial Army in World War II, she would sometimes work twelve hour shifts at a factory making parachutes. We can also think of Kusama’s practice as elevating the idea of ‘women’s labour’, in this case sewing, from something repetitive and dull into a creative process that channels her emotions and fears.
These pieces are among the first examples of ‘soft sculpture’, an approach adopted later in the 1960s and ’70s by many artists who created three-dimensional forms with fabric and textiles.
Narrator:
Yayoi Kusama has a series of early sculptures that reference everyday objects. The three that are on display here are Untitled Accumulation, Macaroni Skirt, and Untitled (Chair).
Untitled Accumulation is a work created between 1962 and 1963. It consists of ten pairs of high-heeled shoes. Each shoe has two to four soft, slug-like protrusions made of stuffed fabric that are attached to the front or emerging from inside the shoes. The protrusions are about as thick as a circle made with a thumb and an index finger. Their lengths range from half an adult’s finger to a full palm. The shorter protrusions point upwards, while the longer ones curve slightly. The entire work is painted in white, so the congruity makes the protrusions look like outgrowths of the shoes.
Macaroni Dress is a work from 1963 and is a silver-grey mesh skirt about 56 centimetres long and 86 centimetres wide. The skirt has the firm texture of gauze and is sparsely woven. White shapes that look like shells or barnacles are attached to the front of the skirt, with most of them gathered where the pleated hem is attached. The bulging shapes range in size and are stuffed with soft material. In between these bulging shapes are short hollow tubes that look like long macaroni. Around the protrusions, parts of the skirt are dappled with white paint.
Untitled (Chair) is a white wooden chair covered by a dense proliferation of white, tentacle-shaped protrusions until only its legs remain visible. The work was created in 1963 and is 81 centimetres high, 93 centimetres wide, and 92 centimetres deep. There are about two or three hundred long and short protrusions on the chair, which overlap and point towards different directions. Those at the centre are particularly large and long, about the length of an adult's forearm. In comparison, the bare chair legs look thin and small. While the entire work is in white, it has a yellowish tinge that reveals its age.